The number of children admitted to hospital with alcohol-related conditions has risen by more than 20% in the last five years, it was revealed today.

Twenty youngsters a day are being diagnosed with conditions such as alcohol poisoning and behavioural disorders due to excessive drinking, according to NHS figures.

The statistics obtained by BBC1's Panorama programme also show that in Cheshire and Merseyside alone more than 10 under-18s per week are admitted because of drink abuse.

Ian Forster, of the North West Ambulance Service, said there had been a noticeable increase in the number of underage drinkers picked up in Liverpool.

He said: "It's not unusual for a child to have drunk a litre of vodka - that would have me on my back for three or four weeks.

"Resources are quite sparse anyway, so to be dragged from pillar to post all over the city for underage drinking, which is avoidable, is keeping us from the patients that we're trained to treat."

In the last five years, the number of under-18s being admitted to hospital with alcohol-related conditions has risen from 6,288 in 2000/1 to 7,579 in 2004/5, according to the NHS Information Centre.

Experts say the Government's harm reduction strategy, which aims to address the problem of alcohol abuse, is not working.

Professor Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians, said: "I think the fact that we're seeing things getting worse, rather than better, two years after a harm reduction strategy, means we need to revisit this very urgently, and what we cannot afford to do is wait the 40 years that it took with smoking."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "Tackling binge drinking is a priority. Although levels of binge drinking are no longer rising, there is no room for complacency."

Progress was being made and commitments in the Government's Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy were on track, the spokeswoman said.

This included: standards for alcohol producers and retailers published in November 2005; regular police clampdowns on town centre disorder; and a multi-million pound responsible drinking campaign launched last month.